weCAMP Final Report

The JISC funding for the weCAMP project has now formally ended, but the weCAMP project will live on through an additional Benefits Realisation project. The uCampus platform will also remain openly available on the web for the foreseeable future.

To read the final report for the project click here: weCAMP Final Report

External Evaluation Meeting 13.01.2010

James Pinder and Diane Hart, the project external evaluators, led a team workshop to discuss the progress of the project, the results of which will feed into the summative evaluation.

The team covered a lot of ground that involved reflecting on the initial project aims and objectives and contrasting them with what had been acheived so far in the project. Married to this was further discussion about an external dissemination strategy for the project.

The external evaluation report is aimed to be complete by the end of February.

Project Board Meeting 14.01.2010

The weCAMP project kicked-off the New Year with a Project Board meeting. The aim of this meeting was to receive project steering input from the board to make effective use of the final three months of the project.

As a summary of buildings in uCampus we have now modelled over 300, 48 Grid Blocks (48+ Hectares), 38 Groups of Non-uni Buildings, 69 University Buildings, 90 Uni-Building Floors and 13 Spatial Taxonomical Models. We are aiming for 75 university buildings for the end of the project.

Darren presented the uCampus 1.0 release candidate platform - the final release of the platform for the weCAMP project. The principal development from 0.51 is the ability to visualise the spatial uses of rooms within a range of university buildings. Each room has a specific colour tag which can be turned on or off. Colour coded room uses can be viewed across any number of buildings simultaneously.

The meeting discussion focused on dissemination planning and developing new avenues for project development within The University of Sheffield and other institutions after the JISC project funding is concluded.

I-borrow Assembly in Canterbury

Three members of the team attended the I-borrow Assembly on 11th December and enjoyed a fascinating day beign shown round Augustine House and learning more about the process and results of the I-borrow project.

Part of the day involved discussing future collaborations and possible BR proposals along with the SMART project team at New Bucks University. It was great to meet face to face. We hope to further develop collaborations in the New Year.

Many thanks to everyone in the I-borrow team for organising and hosting the day.

The Augustine House Experiment

The weCamp team has successfully bid for and been granted JISC funding for a benefits realisation project to develop a 3D visualisation with the I-Borrow team from Canterbury Christ Church University. The project aims to represent the data collected from mobile laptop usage within Augustine House - a new learning centre at CCCU. Partners from Bucks New University will also be involved as part of the project evaluation.

Modelling the Students' Union Redevelopment

We have been working with Students' Union staff since early October 2009 to create 3D models of the Union building's redevelopment. I see this is a great opportunity to engage uCampus with a real user group and test out the methodologies and technologies we have developed so far.

All is going really well. We have now completed what is called Union MODEL 1 project which intends to visualise the entire Union building under construction. MODEL 1 is built in six levels, and each level contains at least three layers: Floor, Spatial Taxonomy, and Signage. MODEL 1 is our first case study into the use of Image Texture of X3D in producing the Signage layers to show the Union's outlets in a more recognisable manner.

The test video clip below is generated to show a navigational route starting from the new East Entrance on Level 2 to the Source area on Level 3. The idea is that multiple such routes will be generated on the basis of Union MODEL 1 and make them readily accessible from the Students' Union Website.

A WMV clip of tour around the Union of Students

During the visit to the Union's Marketing and Communications Team, we were asked if a video clip could be porduced to show a navigation sequence inside the Union buildling. Back in my room, to build an example, I used a desktop video capture package call CaptureWizPro (free trial version) to generate a WMV clip while navigating around the Union building on uCampus.

The clip shows how Leo and I reached the meeting room from the Union's main entrance. X3D player such as Octaga Player Pro has a built-in vedio capturing facility which may speed up the production of navigational clips.